After yb seaon????

[kevin321]

Hi. For small loft fanciers, like myself that can only hold a small amount of yb and ob pigeons do with all the young birds that have finished the yb season and you can only keep a small amount of them for ob, what do you do with them???....Cull or do you take away the eggs from the breeders and only leave them sit on a certain amount of the eggs. Also how many young would one pair of breeders hatch a year???. Thanks.

[swaze]

well first of all I would not use the "cull" word around here....it is against the rules and frowned upon.....you are new though so that is fine you probably did not know that.

there are various non-lethal culling ways to get your numbers lower and i'm sure others can help advise on that.

definitely do not allow your breeders to raise youngsters the entire year. you need to find a way to separate them or in the very least get them some fake plastic or wood eggs. only allow them to breed what you need and that is it.

if given the opportunity a pair could easily raise 20 young birds in a year but that would be foolish anyways as it would burn them out and they'd be in rough shape after raising that many youngsters. most pigeon breeders breed 2 or 3 rounds and sometimes 4 rounds and that is it

one way to help keep your numbers lower too is through attrition of the racing season. send your birds every week and to every race you can. you will lose more birds doing this but more importantly you will end up with some very tough and good pigeons in the group you have left.

more often than not average fanciers baby their pigeons by leaving birds home from the races all the time. they will do something like send 10 birds to a race and leave 20 home because they don't want to risk losing them all or don't want to risk a smash race and not have any left for the next week.

what ends up happening is at the end of the season these lofts end up with a lot more birds than they need and worst of all most of these birds have poor race records because they've only been to 2 or 3 races. a bird can't prove itself if it is sitting in the loft on the weekend when it should be racing.

[hillfamilyloft]

I raise two rounds of young birds. Every young bird gets flown. This way the basket does the selection for you. I think I would go get some wood and make room for them. Then I would fly them all old birds. Train and race them hard. The best at the end of the season stay. Find someone to take the remaining. birds. You can get too many birds too quickly if you do not watch out. I separate them after breeding. The best birth control. I would advise at least two sections in your loft. At current I have 45 birds and five sections. I use all five during breeding, now I only use two.

[yang_fla0vr]

For me, I train and race all my birds to 100 miles and if I'm lucky to get them all back safely from the 100 mile toss then I start to select the ones who are strong and more active from the race. And for the ok birds, I begin selling them to my friends because that's what I've done this year. I don't want to overcrowd my loft with over 30+ birds XD because that's just too much for me to handle since I live near the city. Plus, I don't want my neighbors to complain and stuff.

[kevin321]

Thanks. Was'nt aware or that swaze. I thought that was how a lot of the top fanciers keep numbers down. Like http://www.youtube.com/user/ukpigeon...15/AFRS_5ysGNQ. It would be very hard to find someone to take all the remaining birds. Also for the breeders. Those plastic eggs. Do you take away the real ones and leave them sit on the fakes??? If so what will they do when they realise that the eggs wont hatch??? thanks again.

[blongboy]

Originally Posted by kevin321

Thanks. Was'nt aware or that swaze. I thought that was how a lot of the top fanciers keep numbers down. Like http://www.youtube.com/user/ukpigeon...15/AFRS_5ysGNQ. It would be very hard to find someone to take all the remaining birds. Also for the breeders. Those plastic eggs. Do you take away the real ones and leave them sit on the fakes??? If so what will they do when they realise that the eggs wont hatch??? thanks again.

they will end up giving up, then you do it all over

[yang_fla0vr]

Well, it's not that hard to find fanicers to take the remaining birds because for me I just donated the OK birds to the a near by club in my area which is in the City of New Berlin (20 minutes drive there). Been doing that since 3 years and this 4th year I just sold some of my birds to some friends and relatives.

As for the fake plastic eggs, I usually let the birds try to have enough kids if possible in the Spring, Summer, and Fall because I want to get the best of the best. But for the winter it's way different because if my pair were to have an egg, it's no doubt that the egg is already died due to the fact it's just too cold in the winter. But if you were to use fake plastic eggs then I personally think you are just be wasting the birds time and energy because you have to think about all the hard work the birds are putting into the eggs just like a real mom would do for their baby. Also, if the birds were to realise that the fake egg won't hatch then they will left the nest and try again.

[swaze]

Originally Posted by blongboy

they will end up giving up, then you do it all over

Exactly they will sit on the fake eggs until they are about 20 days old and then they will give up and start over. Really no different than had the eggs just been infertile and in fact you can use infertile eggs too as dummy eggs

the easiest way is to just separate the sexes but for lofts that don't have the space or sections to do this, the dummy egg method is the best alternative